Whatever and Ever, Amen
by The Egg and I
Summary: A multichap AU fic, currently a work in progress. Many pairings, angst, romance, friendship, comedyread to understand sort of experience.


Extensive Author's Preface:

So here it is—the beginning of a Naruto AU project that I've had in the works for a while now. I'm putting it up front that the characters in this story are based on characters that I do not own. However, the lives I've created for them outside of the ninja world are totally mine.

I've never really dallied with AU before, but this really just came to me. Some of the pairings are out there—this first installment involves incest, and there will be sexual situations—and later on a m/f/m pairing. If this isn't your thing—please LEAVE NOW.

That being said—I figure you'll pick things up soon—but as a cheat-sheet: here are the name conversions from Naruto to AU.

Kymbal (kym) RossNaruto

Catherine (Cathy) Spring Sakura

Sebastian Colt Sasuke

Ash Amanpour Neji

Charlotte "Charlie" Amanpour Hinata

Graham Sykes Kiba.

And on that note: ONTO THE HYUUGACEST!

**Chapter 1: Fair **

**  
**_"All is fair, all is fair in love..."_

"it's like that re-occurring dream" Kym spoke softly, his arm wrapped around me—his ash blond eyelashes flush with the apples of his cheeks in the dark of our room. "the one with the pipes in the dark hallway with the red light shining—and the sand on the floor."

"How so?" I asked—adjusting slightly, my bare skin shifting against the contrasting stiff new sheets—and the old worn down comforter; the loose seams lisping tiny down feathers into the sweat-lined depression in the small of my back.

"there's this void between me and whatever I see on the inside of my eyelids." He explains in a whisper—all the while working one large hand through my hair at the crown of my head ever-so-gently.

"And I can hear your voice—but when you speak—it's as if it's off to the side." He raises his hand and motions to the opposite corner, then returns it to my ribcage underneath the blankets and exhales with a faint humming sound before drifting off to sleep.

We went out to dinner with Cathy and whoever she was dating at the time. She, of course, was lovely all dinner. Charming, beautiful, funny, and talented. I was always an admirer of hers—and slightly jealous to tell the truth. But never so much that it detracted for my genuine warmth toward her.

Her boyfriend folded one hand casually over hers as I shifted my burgundy linen napkin in my lap. I watched absently—the space between her ear and collar bone along her neck—the long silver tendrils of her earrings swaying two-and-fro as she laughed. Occasionally she'd turn to face me with a big toothy smile—which I might return briefly before turning my eyes to the edge of my wine glass—three times replenished already. A small line of crimson-crackle crescent moons along the rim.

With Sebastian I always felt inadequate from a physical standpoint. I hid underneath the sheets. My body always had the potential to be as good as his when you couldn't see underneath an ocean of cotton. Despite his body, and his lovely features--he moved awkwardly against me--and although we both wanted to make something beautiful--it seemed to be constantly falling away. As if you were knitting a scarf with a thick satin ribbon. Each series of loops you made wouldn't hold. The ribbon would just slip out of its holding; unraveling as you attempted to complete the next row. I would always look straight into the hollow of his neck and wonder if I looked deep enough if I'd just see a hole there in his ribcage--the humming-bird that had once been his heart still and dead--but the gears still turning and the sinew and muscle pulling--as if it were still frantically beating its wings inside. But I never saw anything; just let my eyes close--my head shifting back and forth over my hair until it was over.

I let my eyes wander from my now-fourth time empty wine glass—to your face. My face hot from the wine, a woody malbec, feels as if it's glowing in the winter warm of the restaurant's air conditioning.

Your eyes are piercing—garden hose green and un-apologetic as they blaze right through me. Your hair hangs in your eyes slightly—and I fight the urge to lean across the small square table and push it off your brow and behind your ears.

Sex with Graham was violent, urgent, and desperate. We would open the "trap door" in the wall of his room in the attic and climb into the cramped crawl space that had seen so many empty bottles of beer, cheap vodka, and plastic bags of marijuana during high school. We would settle onto the worn black futon with the sun and moon comforter that had been his sisters before she graduated from college. I'd lie on my back and stare at the dusty wooden rafters only feet above my face while Graham plugged the little string of white-bulb Christmas lights into the wall.

There was nothing loving about what happened in that crawlspace in the attic of 195 grysbok road. He would pull my dyed-auburn hair away from my neck and sink his teeth deep into my soft flesh. Our kisses were rough --and involved more teeth than tongue. I remember often thinking to myself as we rolled two and fro across the futon--that I would have to wear dark lipstick, and scarves to hide my bruises.

We never made eye contact--it would've made us feel too empty inside. Instead, we each went about our own personal jobs. He would lovingly plant the black-rose bruises along my neck and shoulders--his spindly hard fingers tugging at the hem of my jean skirt---my teeth rounded in little half moons over his left shoulder--my fingers burrowing into the flesh of his back as we knocked violently together--like brittle branches in a rainstorm.

Afterwards, we would drink a few beers, maybe roll a joint and talk about our parents for a bit. But always on the opposite sides of the mattress.

I assured Cathy that dinner was on me, allowing her and her date to exit carefully without feeling rude. It wasn't meant to give you an open invitation--but it certainly seemed to work out that way.

"So how's life without Kym?" You asked so casually the question both you and Cathy had wanted to ask all night but didn't.

"It's still life I suppose." I responded as curtly as the situation would allow, as you poured the remainder of a bottle of cabernet-franc that had been resting on the table into your glass.

"Anymore luck with the ladies?" I sighed, directing my gaze to the bottom of the dinner bill, reaching into my purse for my wallet.

"None at all," you answered triumphantly. "I can't even get to the moving in part." you grimaced slightly, pulling a soft pack of luckies from your suit jacket pocket.

"In truth, I barely get past the first date part." you grumbled bitterly placing the thin white cylinder between your lips, patting down your pockets lightly in search of fire.

"And why's that?" I reached into my purse and removed a heart shaped chrome-plated lighter, then flipped open the top and flicked the spark wheel backward.

"Well," you inhaled, the orange ember of your cigarette illuminating your face. "I'm like this glass of wine here," you croaked a bit--keeping the smoke in your lungs a moment more before exhaling it slowly into the glass.

"that smoke--hovering--is like the me that gets involved with these girls. It's me, but it's the parts of me I don't really care for--or really even classify as really being me--and beneath is what I really want to give to, and share with someone." You explained carefully, before blowing the smoke out of the glass and finishing the wine in one gulp.

"Does that make any sense?" You smiled slightly--for the first time the whole meal.

We stopped in front of your ominous brick apartment building. you leaned in the doorframe, smiling coyly, eyes low-set on me. I'd seen that look before. When Graham came to my window in early evening and wanted to go to bed he had given me that look. It seemed that Jasper gave me that look whenever he smiled. There was something dangerous about that look.

"I know you probably don't want a nightcap." you pushed through the doorway, half strutting-half gliding up behind me. "But at least let me make you coffee." The 'f' in coffee blew a faint breeze over the nape of my neck.

I parted my lips, as if to speak. What would I say? I want to but I don't? Stop? Yes? Please? Would I beg? How long had it been since somebody had touched me? Did I want you, or Max to touch me? Or would anyone do?

_Ding_

The elevator opened.

I don't know if I ever said yes or if it was just implied, but either way I was now in the apartment of one Ash Amanpour--more specifically in the bathroom--applying my "venom" lipstick in the color "belladonna": a deep crimson-y red. This so-called-venom brand lipstick was so called due to the blend of hot pepper and cinnamon extracts blended with the pigments in order to make your lips sing a bit--therein naturally plumping them. Unaccustomed to make-up, I'd foolishly bought the first lipstick the woman at the cosmetics counter had recommended. Now, I was beginning to worry that the color made me look cheap.

After applying my lipstick, I entered the living room--where you sat on a black fabric loveseat--two white ceramic mugs of coffee steaming on the coffee table. The lights were dim, and there was the soft sound of music coming from your record player. The situation may have seemed obvious, but I intended to act normal for as long as possible.

"So, what ever happened to your last girlfriend? What's her name…"

"Leah."

"Yeah."

"She got tired of me," you asserted--taking a sip of your coffee. "and I was actually quite tired of her for long before she got tired of me." You exhaled wearily, taking another sip of your coffee--your eyes fixed on my mouth.

"What are you looking at?" I nearly snapped.

"Your mouth." you quipped casually.

"It's crooked, I know."

"It's not a bad crooked--besides, that wasn't what I was looking at."

"Then what are you looking at?" I challenged.

"Your lipstick." You answered flatly.

"My lipstick? What's so special about it?"

"Nothing to you most likely---but you didn't really wear that color when we were younger."

"Oh? Am I too old for it now?" I laughed nervously.

"No, not at all--it makes you look older, sexier even." You offered with a tone I couldn't place as genuine or feigned disinterest.

"Benjamin, are you trying to seduce me?" I asked huskily in my best Mrs. Robinson. Being with the ballet had brought out more of my theatrical side.

"Do you want me to seduce you ?" You smirked.

"I suppose that depends," I sighed, reclining slightly into my corner of the couch.

"this whole thing is so fucked up." you chuckled.

"First it's coffee, then it's coffee with lipstick, and now a potential seduction."

There was a pause, wherein, I swear I could have felt my father spinning with rage in his grave.

"I always had an admiration for lipstick." You mused aloud.

" It was a beacon, a relic of civilization amongst the primal savagery of sex." you ran your finger around the rim of your mug carefully as you spoke.

" Archaeologists could track through the footprints the migrations and activities of far gone civilizations, and uncover ruins of past times we look at in disillusioned nostalgia and dramatic horror. And I could see the trails of Leah's kisses, where her lips moved about me before we joined as one in savage union. I would ravage her with my body, but unwavering would stand that beacon before my eyes. Her lips, the point of focus of so many forms, was clandestinely presented as the high society of her bare body, possessing a level of height and brightness to intensely stare me down with their blinding hues of red and purple against their oppressively round figure."

I looked at you in complete and utter shock---the breath stolen from my lungs, my heart set running by your words. Maybe it was your shocking honesty, or the wine, or the pounding of my cardiovascular muscles. But the question just passed over my lips without thought or inhibition:

"What do you think it would be like to be with the other?"

"Pardon?"

"As in you or I--"

"Oh, if I were fucking you?"

"Yeah I guess you could put it that way…" I blushed deeply.

"I best remember the uniquely urban starkness of the streets of lower Manhattan in the dead of that Saturday night," You began in your most theatrical narrative.

"Our feet simultaneously clacking under the barren pseudo-black drapery of the night sky. Light penetrating everywhere, the serenity our father universe had intended us to feel in our absence of the sun was all but taken away, and replaced with the nostalgic warmth of the lit-up windows of Greenwich and Houston apartments." You sighed heavily, leaning back into the sofa and closing your eyes as you spoke:

"So far removed from home, I was rather deranged in the presence of such imagery, of pieces of memory found within each pent-sensual snapshot in the form of bits of sound and echoes, the familiar texture of crumbling bricks, the clop of a soft-soled sneaker against an empty street, the enveloping warmth of a solitary street on a summer's night"

I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the painted blush across my cheeks and over the tops of my ears. I took in the sound of your voice --crackling through my ears.

" Such shards can be, always are refit into new fabric, but in their process scatter about the street, in front of the bare feet on which we tread through the past. All memories; all shards are behind us, leaving a dangerous trail on which to go back. I felt in such numerous and minimal stings an ever growing separation, an anxiety, a loss. Overpowered by the sight of street-stop diners, one after the other; the stops of quick companionship and omnipotent memory, I collapsed into her, caught by her badge of memorial maternity."

I attempted desperately not to cry as you continued. This woman--the one you were weaving your wonderful story about--how could this woman possibly be me? My mind begged-- my arms and legs tense and quivering just as the strands of brightly colored yarn vibrate--taught and slithering into their loom of cables.

" The first kisses; always the most dangerous." You laughed gently to yourself, I opened my eyes--my anticipation mounting--your eyes still closed in reverie.

" A subway ride of anxiety, of fragile tension we both tried to keep alive through complete stillness. Not a thing to be done, lest we lose the desire we so badly wanted. Ever so quietly, not until the front door of that room was to open, not before unrestrained fury could take the floor. Here's to a new future, an afterlife; here's to the end of childhood. I do not know what it was below the belts we clinked up high, only that the glass shattered enough to bring about the new shards; to create new ends for newer beginnings." You opened your eyes and smiled

"And what about you?" you wasted no time.

"Ash, I--"

"Knock it off Charlie, you know how it works."

Reluctantly I looked into my coffee cup--my reflection staring back from the rippling surface of the un-touched dark-brown liquid. My hands shook slightly, and I tried not to search too hard for the words before I said them.

"I would probably cry." I began.

"I would cry until you made me stop--and then your eyes." I took a deep breath, and from there it just poured out--like water along the sides of the highway during a big storm.

"I would look into your eyes--and our clothes would melt off --like wax from a candle, and I'd wind my fingers into your hair like vines in a trellis--and you would kiss the hollow of my neck---and lisp your lips over my clavicles while you fell into me as milk diffuses into black coffee. We'd drop through the sheets--breathless---like stars slipping from a silver net drug through the sea of night sky. And maybe you'd look into my eyes--and we wouldn't feel empty--but maybe we would--and you'd tie me up in red ribbons and pack me away on the shelf--to be forgotten--or re-given as a gift to a friend."

We sat in a crippling silence for a couple of seconds. You rolled the paper-white sleeves of your dress-shirt, ran your hands over your mouth, parted your lips--wetted them as if you were going to speak--but instead just exhaled labouredly.

I began to cry.

"Charlie," you cooed hesitantly. "Don't cry."

I said nothing, just continued quietly whimpering to myself.

"Charlie," you spoke a bit louder. "Why are you crying?" you half-whined, moving closer to me on the couch.

"B-be-because, I--I am s-such a fucking m-mess." I choked on my sobs

"Because, I came here to the city--at least I told myself," I rubbed furiously at my eyes with the back of my hands in an attempt to keep the mascara from running down my face in thick black streams.

"I was here to get over Kym, to dance a bit--to further my career."

You tried to wrap your arms around me, but I refused you--raising my voice and swinging my hands broadly from side to side.

"I came here for you Ash!" I shouted, finally giving voice to the thoughts I had been having all night.

"I've tried, but it just doesn't work with anyone else!" I wailed, collapsing into

your chest.

It seemed like a perfect mirror of that day. Me leaning against you—crying to you, confused and hurt. In that silence I thought back to that day. It was early November and unseasonably bitter cold. It was a clear day and the wind howled so the flaming foliage on brittle swaying trees scraped desperately with their fiery digits to catch hold of any bit of hazy yellow sky they could reach. Despite this, I was standing on the ash grey steps of the funeral home without a jacket in mom's black wool skirt and top since I didn't have anything "appropriate" for this sort of thing, greeting sniffing colleagues, weeping family, and their awkward spouses or children that remained totally unaffiliated with the loss.

After everyone, or who I deemed as everyone after the cold started to burn, shuffled into the funeral home, I finally followed suit and walked into the ominous room myself. It was too warm inside, even for someone who'd just come from being outside. And there was the smell; the horrifically suffocating greasy sweet stench of funeral lilies permeating the air. The oppressive heat only perpetuated this. I began to feel somewhat queasy at this time.

A few men in sharp looking business suits, beginning to break a sweat in the sweltering heat of the funeral parlor who did not remove their jackets in fear of offending someone, approached me with that sort of pathetic "Oh-we're-so-sorry-for-your-loss-poor-girl-right-before-your-big night." sort of look on their faces.

"You're so strong." Said one in a charcoal pinstripe getup with a hideous cornflower blue printed tie.

"You're mother must be devastated." Sighed another. I answered him with a silent nod and the lowering of my eyes to the cigarette burned burgundy carpet underneath my faux Prada high heels.

"I'm so sorry kiddo." Said another voice I recognized as my Dad's old boss. I didn't look up at him though. It wasn't because I wanted to be rude, but rather because the heat, the perfectly shtick mismatched art deco statues and moldings over the doorframes, and the overwhelming, smothering scent of the lilies had turned my head into a lightning storm, and my stomach into the tossing sea it was raging upon.

"It'll all be ok Charlie." He foolishly offered me sympathy with the same nickname used by my deceased father, lying in an open casket in the next room. The room didn't spin, nor did time stop like they say it does, but rather it kicked off sideways and tumbled out of my perception. It was as if I would just shatter, or melt, or perhaps just cease to be.

Until he saved me.

My knight in shining armor: my cousin and caretaker Ash draped an arm over my shoulders, nodded to the sweating whispering men in suits and brought me to the kitchen. He said nothing, just opened the white French doors and stopped at the large wooden table meant for entertaining the family of the deceased. It was covered in a tasteful black table cloth and various potluck foods the guests had brought for our family. Ash weakly smiled, lifting the edge of the tablecloth and slid quietly under the table, motioning for me to follow.

When we were younger, Ash and I used to hide under the table during awkward and obnoxious family gatherings. Sometimes I'd bring crayons and Ash would bring his plastic dinosaurs or power ranger action figures. But most often we would bring nothing and pretend that there was a horrible storm outside and that we, in our little shelter, would have to wait out the storm and make plans to rebuild civilization. With more waterslides and roller coasters of course. Now, I sat across from Nate under the table at the funeral parlor at age 20, the reality our only remaining family, my father's death waiting just outside.

"How are you holding up?" He asked quietly, taking off his jacket and loosening his tie.

" Fine." I whispered. This made him smile a bit more.

"A martyr to the last." He chuckled. "You've always done that Charlie, even since we were kids."

Despite Ash's chipper attitude, I knew he was really masking his own private pain. We hadn't spoke about his Father, my uncle's death; his relationship with my father, or the summer at the beach in years.

My father had caught us—down at the pier at sunset. He had cursed him out, swearing his brother would have killed him there if he'd seen—and that he never wanted to see him again. The opening night of my first professional show would have been the first time they'd have seen each other since. However, like most things, family reunions were always unexpected in the Amanpour family household.

I pulled my knees a bit tighter into my chest, fiddling with the hem of the itchy black wool skirt, carefully pulling out each stitch of black thread with my furiously bitten fingernails. I chewed on my lip aggressively, the mineral taste of lipstick in my mouth. I contemplated talking to Ash about Dad. I suppose I owed him that much.

"Ash I know that you," I started, but Ash stopped me mid sentence with a sob. I looked up from my unraveling hem to see Ash with his face buried in his hands. I got on my hands and knees, and crawled across the stone colored tile to him and pulled him gently to me.

He knew that I was in no state then. No state to talk about how wrong this was, how I hated myself for what was happening. He just knowingly snaked one arm underneath my bent legs and lifted me off the couch—heading solemnly for the bedroom.

. He was very gentle. He cradled my head like an infant's on its way down to the pillow. My hair made light scratching noises as my head came closer to the pillow. I lay there, on the pale yellow sheets—curly cherry brown hair fanned out around me like a net—to catch all my worries and keep them close at hand.

There was so much I wanted to say to you, but the words didn't come. Instead I reached out and touched your face. I was crying long before I brought my lips to your cheek, then your eyelids, your forehead, your collar bone, the hollow of your neck—I sat back and looked at you, as if you might have the answers. You didn't speak, just leaned in, kissed my cheek, my eyelids, my forehead, my collar bone, the hollow and nape of my neck, then my lips. It was the first time we had ever kissed. I could taste the salt of your tears on my lips. You tasted like the sea. I felt as inconstant as its sandy shore. But we, we were like the ocean.


End file.
